Playing Editor for Edible DC’s Summer Issue

Freelancing and part-timing is great, great, great. But I’m always jumping from one project to the next, barely remembering to share the last story I wrote as I wade knee-deep into another. That’s why sinking into one bigger project for a few weeks sounded so appealing. Getting to help create a magazine devoted to all the local food topics I love? Icing on the cake.

I had the pleasure of guest editing Edible DC’s summer issue, which is being distributed this month throughout the Washington, D.C. region. The issue is focused on the Chesapeake Bay — the food this glorious watershed produces and what we should eat to ensure it continues doing so into the future. Edible DC’s publisher Susan Able asked me to help curate the issue because of my background as a staff writer at the Chesapeake Bay Journal and my insatiable interest in connecting the dots between what we eat and where we live. A huge thanks to Susan and creative director Hannah Hudson for allowing me to work on this issue with them and making all the disparate thoughts come together so beautifully on paper.

First things first, here’s a list of where you can find the issue throughout the metro area. And here’s a link to the e-version for thumbing through at your leisure. Or find the digital version of the magazine in the top right corner at EdibleDC.com. (Don’t worry, mom, I’ll send you a hardcopy.)

In the end, my intro to magazine editing went pretty smoothly, I think. I kept checking in with Susan throughout the editing process to see if I was missing something. Is something going wrong and I just don’t know about it? Are we really on pace? All’s well? Are you sure? And then, it pretty much was.

I did gain a lot more appreciation for the hard work of so many editors I work with every day as a freelance writer. So that’s why you don’t get back to me with edits five minutes after I turn something in… because you’re coordinating the schedules of three busy chefs and a photographer to be in the same spot at the same time with the right seasonal produce. Editing with such a light and graceful touch as so many of you have for me is far from automatic, and I am grateful I had your examples to think of as I attempted (and sometimes failed) to do the same.

Mostly, editing this issue was super fun. I can’t even tell you how excited I was to sit in front of blank wall post-its and fill them in with our ideas for this issue. To see it all come together in living color is truly thrilling.

Before I blubber on any longer (I hear the Oscar wrap-up-your-speech music playing), I’ll end by saying just how grateful I am to be a writer (and, now, guest editor) in the midst of such a wonderfully collaborative and growing food culture in DC.

To all the farmers, fishers, food businesses and chefs who are so worth writing about — Cheers to a lovely summer!